I couldn't help but think that with all the Gene-Treatments nowadays, we may just end up seeing more People Jars. Now, granted, they've been growing bodies for use in organ replacements and the like, but what about the famous anonomous doners and corps cranking out their own special company folks?

It's a concept done to death in the books, movies, and videogames-but i don't hear about it so much for characters/NPCs.

I'm sure with anonymous sperm/egg doners and the like(yes, I said Sperm and Egg, deal ), Im thinking in the 2070s they have stuff to grow said embryos that they can implant with Gene-Tech, depending on what they want their 'Special Folks' to have. Granted, this sort of method is way too cost and resource-heavy to use on garden variety people, but for those 'Special' Company men(be it combat, hackers, and the like-I can especially see excellent computer folks with all of the brain-boosting stuff they have, awesome security hackers and the like), this might just be good.

Naturally, it opens up some fun character concepts too...a little cliche maybe(Grown by a Corp, escaped somehow, etc), but this method could also be great for adding some fun Mental disadvantages in, Enemies, and all kinds of past crap that can spit out of the woodwork.

Has anyone toyed with this idea recently? I'm wondering what would be a good way to go about it. I mean-some things are given, no matter what type of person they were 'building', Skillwires(with Expert System) would probably be part of their stuff, but I was thinking more Genelike. Seeing the thread on Genetic Heritage made me thing this could work wonderfully...what about Genecrafted? Type O Compatibility? Biocompatibility Cyber/Bioware? Im sure all of that stuff can be worked in somehow. Phenotype adjustments and Transgenics would also probably make nice appearances. (Other good negative qualities for such characters might be High-Maitenance Implant, possible Implant Addiction, the aformentioned plethora of Mental stuff that could go wrong, Biosystem Overstress, and if you convert it from SR3 like we did, Mysterious Cyberware.)

Ive got some ideas milling around my head for characters, and this sounds all too cool; again, a little 'classic and cliche' but cool at the same time. Think it's possible some corps have some People Jars lying around? How would you guys go about making a Jar Baby?(not to be confused with a Jarhead.)

wasn't there this little tidbit about cloning not working?
if anything you need egg and sperm from donor and surrogate mother i'd say O.o

Not cloning. I mean, actual sperm from a man, an egg from a woman; incubated, like you said. But perhaps in an 'artificial womb'.

Do you think in 2070s they'd be able to recreate a womb, basically? Or perhaps for the first month before implanting/transferring it to a surrogate?

there's been talk about this before, mostly concerning bio-drones i think . . i think with artificial womb it won't work in the SR world, because there needs to be some magic and technology can't create souls(yeah, take that AI's)

The main problem with this is that the turn around time is just too long. I understood from augmentation that you could force grow clones, but the brain never developed properly, and thus all you got were wimp clones, only good for spare parts (need aug p. ref).

If you grow a body at the normal rate, you're looking at 15 or 16 years until the child reaches maturity. For the cost of your one genegineered super soldier/hacker/whatever, you could employ hundreds of regular folk, implant them up to the eyeballs with various sorts of 'ware, probably completely rewrite their genetic code. Or invest in jarheads or cyberzombies. Even if you did genegineer your super-employee, you're going to raise them to love the corp as much or more than any of your other employees, so they don't run away.

It's certainly something you could do, but I doubt they'll even be as common as other hyper-rare cutting edge applications like jar-heads or cyberzombies. If you were to go ahead as a PC, it could be interesting justification for a lot of unusual 'ware, and odd quirks, as well as being hunted by the parent corp, and unusually high skills in a very young person.

You make a good point of things like cost and the like. I mean, cyberzombies and jarheads aren't being cranked out by the armies for that reason. It's awesome to have a few on hand, naturally, but when you can load 50 guys with high-level Skillwires(5 or so, let's say), and a bunch of ware(that's not even that super-expensive, in the end), that ends up equalling the price that it costs to make 1 cyberzombie or jarhead(perhaps 2), yeah. You have to want those high-powered guys.

I did think it would be a neat PC idea. I wasn't thinking, say 16 years, more like 18-19 or so, maybe even 20. Young for sure, but not a kid. (though a kid, 15 or 16, might be a cool concept as well. Perhaps with slightly lower skills than the 18-19 year old.)

Of course, there's also the ''take a youngun that's already born and begin gene infusing them''. This might be the idea I would run with. Rather than a fullblown tube baby, a kid that was born to folks who ''signed up for the KorpKiddie program'' and donated their kid for a bunch of money or something. (Or donated sperm, and egg, and the kid was born to some wage-womb.)

Ive kinda always liked the idea of ''Whoa, we made something good! Perfect for us! Yes!''...EXCEPT for the little thing that lets them escape somehow. Im also wondering that if this kind of person was made(say, it was an experiement or series of experiments, of which only a few survived and were what they wanted), what kind of things would they do to ''ensure loyalty?'' It could be the ol' cranial bomb, naturally-but those are removable and not 100% guarenteed to keep your KorpKiddie from revolting. Possible BTL/Personafix type of chips? Just good ol' fashioned ''Raise the Kid from the time he can understand language to be Super Loyal?'' Free will is something all humans and metahumans have, so plain-old reprogramming on people isn't guarenteed to work.

The unusual ware you mentioned could be interesting, I'm sure whatever they were making, they'd have the 'bases' covered(brain stuff for hackers, muscle and speed stuff for combat, skillwires for all), they could come up with some other interesting goodies to put in that could be considered 'unusual.' Between Genetic Heritage and Biocompatibility, if they had it(they probably would, or instead Type 0 and Genecrafted, or Type 0 and fill in the blank), they have a good capacity for lots of stuff. Im sure they could think of something a little out of the ordinary to add in, as well.

The person's social skills might also be interesting. Even if they made the SuperFace, I'm not sure how street-saavy they would be. Corp-saavy, sure, but socially these people could be interesting. Im not even thinking Uncouth; I'm thinking, they just might be a little different in some ways.

...yah, her name is Violet. Engineered and enhanced by MetaTech (now a part of NeoNet) to be their crack matrix infiltration agent. Resourceful kid genius who thinks of her self as the namesake character from the Lemony Snicket stories. Traded the design for a then experimental commlink implant she had to a competitor for her extraction from the corp village. Has several fake SINs. Has both Technomaina and Compulsive NQs and is Paranoid as hell that MT is still after her (carries a can of that cleanup stuff from Arsenal on every mission & saving up to get Genewipe).

...a fun character to play.

Part of me actually wonders if making a great Matrix-specialist this way would be even better for the corps than 'Combat Guy'.

Combat Guys can be made a bit easier, IMO. Give em a gun skill, a melee skill, a bunch of ware to help them and there ya go. But there's also assloads more expendable, on the other hand.


But like Violet, a good, genetically crafted Matrix master would be umpteen times more dangerous. Who needs a gun when the person can just...I don't know, erase an entire group of people from existance? While not literally, they could certainly wreak other kinds of havoc. And while the Matrix can be a dangerous place-the seem, all in all, less 'Expendable'' and perhaps more worth the nuyen put into 'em.